Background

Previous data suggest a favourable association between religion and mortality.

Methods

We investigated the association between selected religious groups and all-cause mortality in 1627 eastern Finnish men aged 42-60 years during 1984-1989 as a part of the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (KIHD).

Results

Eastern Orthodox men had a 5.1-fold (95% confidence interval [CI : 1.98-13.3, P<0.001) mortality as compared with Lutheran men after adjusting for main confounders.

Adjustment for different sets of covariates did not affect the magnitude of relative hazard (RH) notably.

With adjustment for income, childhood socioeconomic status (SES), and years of education RH for the Orthodox religion was 4.2 (95% CI : 2.4-7.3, P<0.001) and 4.4 (95% CI : 2.5-7.7, P<0.001) with depression, helplessness, quality of relationships, marital status and organizational participation, and 4.1 (95% CI : 2.4-7.2, P<0.001) when adjusted for the use of tobacco and alcohol and the intensity of physical activity.

After adjustment for migration because of the war the RH was 4.5 (95% CI : 1.9-10.8, P<0.001). (...)